In a change to Google Shopping, comparison shopping services such as Kelkoo are now eligible to advertise products from their comparison engines on Google Shopping, providing their service meets eligibility criteria. The change is being implemented in EEA and Switzerland.
What is Google Shopping?
Google Shopping refers to the paid-for product ads that are served at the top of search results against relevant product searches on desktop/laptop, mobile and tablet. Advertisers make available a feed of their product inventory and bid against other advertisers for their products to appear. If a product is available from multiple retailers, Google Shopping provides consumers with a comparison of pricing and shipping. Google Shopping was launched in 2002 as Froogle, and in 2012 evolved into the format and paid model we know today.
What's changing?
As of 27 September 2017, comparison shopping services will now be able to advertise products alongside those from brands and retailers in Google Shopping. Google Shopping results will be branded “by Google,” while those from other sites will be labelled accordingly.
What will the impact be?
We can expect the number of advertisers competing in a given auction to increase. In turn, this means ad depth – the number of ads appearing against a given search query – and competition will also grow.
However, it is unlikely that advertisers will experience any significant increase in how much they pay for clicks via Google Shopping. Cost per click will continue to be determined by how much advertisers are willing to pay, which of course is down to how effectively they convert traffic to revenue.
More likely, advertisers may see a minor drop in traffic through Google Shopping in categories for which comparison shopping services are prominent as a result of the increased number of advertisers. As is currently the case, only one ad will be shown for a single product.
